


Memories

by starsandsupernovae



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, BuckyNat Secret Santa, F/M, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Mutual Pining, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, They hug eachother, i mean not really its implied, they both get a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 03:37:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17399303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsandsupernovae/pseuds/starsandsupernovae
Summary: MCU where Bucky still trained Nat in the Red Room and they talk about it in Wakanda. They catch feelings





	Memories

**Author's Note:**

> My gift for @sebanstiansboobear on tumblr for buckynat secret santa 2018

Thud. Thud.  
The dull sound of her hand hitting the punching bag echoes throughout the empty gym, bouncing off wooden walls and barely used exercise equipment to hit back into her, each blow causing the bruises on her knuckles to grow wider, the bandages she used to wrap her hands with slowly coloring with deep red. Natasha keeps at it, ever so slightly adjusting her stance as she continues to put more power behind her fists, to receive back more of the impact. Anything to ground her here, in the gym, to tire her out, tire out her mind until it can no longer bring up what she’d like to remain buried. Even as she does so a memory arises, floating up from where she thought it had been lost in the deep sea of her experiences, of times long gone.

_“Not like that, Natalya. Here.”_  
_His firm arms pulling her close and positioning her. Dark brown hair falling into his eyes as he stepped back to view her stance._  
_“Yes, you got it. Just like that.”_  
_A smile, his lips curling in approval, as she lifted her hands to strike again._

Thud!  
A particularly hard blow brings renewed pain to her knuckles, scurrying up her hand. It has the desired effect, bringing her back to the gym, staring at the black bag in front of her. It’s different from any other, a material Natasha has never seen before. Stark or Banner would love to get their hands on this, take it apart and see how it was made. Natasha punches it instead, hits it over and over and over, sets it up against her closed fists, uses it for the pain it gives, for the burn in her muscles, the bruises on her fingers, all that takes her mind from someone else who would have loved to take it apart, who despite his talent at destruction still always wanted to see how it all worked first. Because as much as she’d like to deny it, she knew why these memories were coming back, why they were resurfacing now and here. Natasha was never one to lie to herself.  
She didn’t notice him, standing in the doorway in his casual clothing, hair pulled back, until he spoke.  
“Natalya?”  
His voice was soft, hesitant, and it sounded wrong, he sounded wrong.  
She turned to face him, still tense, poised to attack.  
“Barnes.”  
She was unsure what to call him now. Steve called him Bucky but that seemed off, too familiar in the wrong way. He had always been James to her- but he wasn’t that anymore. She didn’t know what he was anymore. Barnes seemed separate enough, safe. Natasha had always been taught to stay safe.  
“Do you mind if I join you?” he asked, and he too was being safe, and it was right this caution, but it was also so very wrong, there was no one to hide from now they could be themselves. But that was it. She didn’t know who James himself was anymore.  
“The gym is for all of us,” she replied, a practiced smile on her face. But even as she put on the expression she remembered who taught it to her. 

_“You’re good at it.”_  
_A safe house in the west, snow piling high on the windowsills, an empty fireplace, cuddled together for warmth. A cool metal arm, wrapping her in blankets._  
_“You’re good at the faces, but I can always tell when your eyes are really smiling Natalya.”_  
_Faces closer, until she can count every snowflake resting on his eyelashes._  
_“Because they only smile for you,” she whispers and their lips meet._

He gives no sign that her expression is fake though, and Natasha’s not sure how she feels about it. Instead, he walks in and wraps his own hands.  
“Want to spar?” he asks and she does, she wants to see how he fights now, wants to get back into the rhythm with him, and she doesn’t, she doesn’t want to see how he’s changed, how their rhythm’s gone, how to him it was never there.  
“Not today,” she says, stepping away and grabbing her water bottle. She takes a drink to buy time, the cool liquid tumbling down her throat reminding her how much she needed it, how long she’d been in there.  
“I need to talk to go talk things over with Steve. Maybe another time.” She gives him another smile and turns to leave.  
There’s a noise behind her, something that might have been her name, but it’s quiet and she’s gone before it can be repeated. 

____________________________________________________

He sinks down onto a bench as he sees her walking away, her blonde hair disappearing around the doorway. Blonde now, and he misses the red, the fire that was so apt for Natalya, his Natalya, who always had the fiery spirit in her. Even the coldest Russian winters were nothing to Natalya’s flame, and oh god he misses it, he misses her so much that he can feel it, a deep loss, a hole sitting in his chest.  
He had covered it up, believed her dead, and filled up the hole with so much emptiness, so much cold he had become numb, had submitted to his handlers, had finally fully given in. But now she was back and all the ice he had wrapped around himself in a futile attempt to heal the wound had melted, now he the gaping wound was bleeding out as he watched her, not sure what to say. And perhaps there was nothing to say anymore.

Because you didn’t just think she was dead did you?

He closed his eyes, hands falling to the bench beneath him curling into fists as he tried to fight off the voice in his mind, the voice that kept telling him

You thought you killed her.  
You shot her.  
You shot Natalya

He jumped to his feet leaving the room as swiftly as he could without actually running, as though in doing so he could leave his thoughts his memories behind.  
The halls were empty, the large building they had been given to stay in always was, and James had walked down them all endlessly pacing while the others slept, while the others ate, while the others lived. He walked.  
He was called Bucky now, and in a way, it felt right, but in another, much more real way it felt wrong, like a name he’d outgrown, one that no longer fit him. Bucky was too small and he wore it for Steve like one might wear a too small sweater to please he who gifted it. But James was his name, he knew the name James.  
She had known the name James.  
And she had always known him best. Even when she was lying on the ground, pleading with him for her life she had known him. At the end of the empty hall James sits, back against the wall, knees to his chest as he lets the memory take over him again.

_Rain falling down, hitting him everywhere, obscuring visibility. Brown mud mixing with bright red hair. Black suit torn to pieces. A gun heavy in his hands._  
_“James…”_  
_A broken voice and he knows it, why does he know the voice._  
_“Look at me James, please.”_  
_He doesn’t want to look at his target, he has orders, he needs to shoot through the heart, he needs to carry out his mission, he has orders-_  
_Brilliant green eyes, still sparkling in the rain and gloom shining_  
_“James please….”_  
_He stands still, aiming, but not firing. Something’s wrong, but he has orders_  
_The eyes close._  
_“I love you okay? I want you to know that I love you James”_  
_She speaks and he knows that he needs to silence her, he wants to listen but he has orders he needs to follow, he has orders, he needs to follow his orders_  
_“And if you remember this, if-when you break free,”_  
_There’s water on her face and on his face and it’s not rain it’s something else and he doesn’t know what to do it’s wrong it’s all wrong but he has orders_  
_“I forgive you”_  
_He has orders._  
_The gun fires._

It wasn’t the heart. He knows that now, knows that she says it was barely more than a flesh wound, knows that she says it was nothing compared to any other injuries she’s gotten. But he also knows that there’s a scar, an angry red mark on her abdomen. The Black Widow doesn’t get scars from flesh wounds, her body does not let marks of ‘nothing’ remain. And she doesn’t look at him anymore, doesn’t speak to him, can’t stand to be in the same room. He doesn’t blame her. Sometimes he wishes he didn’t have to be with himself either. The tiniest of smiles plays with the corners of his lips as he realizes this is exactly the kind of self pity that Natalya would never tolerate, that she would pull him from. If she was here she would make sure he knew how much she valued being with him, how much he deserved to be valued, all in her own way without saying any of it. She never needed to say it.  
The smile fades as he realizes that she is here, that she’s right in this building, so close to him now, what he never dreamed was possible and yet she seems a continent away still.  
He doesn’t know how long he sits there, unmoving. There’s really nowhere else he needs to be, nothing else for him to do. They talk a lot, about what they’ll do when they’re allowed back, when they return to the states. Return Steve always says, like it’s where James is from. But James knows he’s not from the America Steve talks about, the country feels foreign and he knows there’s no place for him to return to. Home isn’t a place to James. She’s a person and he’s not sure how-if he can really find her again. 

______________________________

It had worked in a way. Natasha is exhausted now, sitting in her room trying to convince herself to read another page. But as she hears him pass by again, she is too tired to let him go, too tired to act like she doesn’t hear him, like she doesn’t know he’s there, right there outside his door, tired of him being there but never being sure who the him was. Natasha is tired and it takes more effort then she has to let him keep walking. Her feet carry her to the doorway before she’s aware she’s moving. She opens the door just as he passes and he turns to face her, his expression indecipherable as she swings the wooden door open wider, inviting him in. He moves hesitantly, gingerly sitting down on the chair as she sits back down on her bed, cross-legged, sinking down into the too heavy thick blanket.  
“Natalya…” he says before stopping, trying to gather words eventually deciding on-  
“I’m sorry. I know you don’t want me here. I know, I understand-”  
She cuts him off, not understanding herself.  
“I don’t not want you here, James.” she says, and he stills as she says his name, his real name for the first time since he came back.  
“I just- I want to know who the you that is here is.” she continues, her voice dropping to a whisper but her eyes never leave his as though just by staring, by looking into the depths she could see inside him, see what thoughts and emotions whirled just behind them.  
He wants to answer with confidence and certainty, he wishes he could but  
“I don’t know.” it’s the only truthful answer he can give and he will not lie to her. Whatever he has done, whatever atrocities he has committed, he will not lie to her now.  
“I don’t know who I am anymore Natalya. I know parts of myself, but they’re never whole, never fit together. Sometimes Steve talks about me and it feels a little right, but it’s not me. I read reports of the Winter Soldier, and I know those are right but that’s not me either.”  
He shifts in his seat, trying to fit his fractured thoughts into words.  
“There’s so much now, so many things, memories, all flooding into my mind and I don’t know which ones are mine, if they all are, or if none of them are, if they belong to someone long gone.There’s only one thing that feels right, only one constant in all the memories that feel like me.”  
He wants to look away from her gaze as he speaks, bares his soul, but she is still staring into his eyes and he will not break from that. He owes her that much. He owes her everything.  
“And that’s you.”  
His words hit her with a wave of relief that is quickly overcome with a feeling almost new to her, a feeling she thought she’d never feel again. She loves him, and that realization gets stuck in her throat as she struggles for what to say.  
“What do you remember?” she asks, voice coming out scratched and raw.  
“I remember everything, Natalya. And I remember the last time we meet, and so I understand, I do, if you hate me, if you never want to see me again.” He says it with a fear he tries to keep out of his tone, the fear that she will say yes, that he needs to leave, the fear that he will never have her again, that she never wants to have him.  
She sits in silence for a moment before reaching for the hem of her t-shirt, gently raising the soft fabric to reveal the angry red scar.  
“Because of this? You think I don’t want you because of this?” she asks, and he doesn’t, he can’t answer her. But he doesn’t have to, because she’s reaching for him and he comes closer and she has his hand, placing it gently on the scar so his fingers are just brushing the marred skin.  
“This doesn’t make me hate you, James. This scar, what it is could never make me hate you, because it’s not what it is, this scar is about what it isn’t.”  
She takes his hand, lifting it to press against her chest until he can feel her heartbeat through the thin cotton of her shirt.  
“You were supposed to kill me. That bullet was supposed to go here, and I know what they do, I know what control they have. I know what the orders mean. But there’s nothing here. There’s a scar down here because you didn’t shoot me here. No matter what they did to you you could never shoot here. That scar meant that you were still there somewhere, the man I loved was there somewhere.”  
She drops her hand but his stays, feeling her heart beating.  
“The man I love is here now.” She says and for the first time, in this strange country, sitting on a too soft bed, hand pressed against her chest, James feels whole.


End file.
